The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, together with Halcyon Gallery, will unveil 21 works by celebrated British artist
>> Mitch Griffiths * 1971 Nuneaton
as part of a remarkable new exhibition: Realisms. (04.06.2016 - 18.09.2016)
Working in oils and echoing the tableaux of the Old Masters, Griffiths produces modern paintings that address issues of identity and inclusion, obsolescence and conflict. A virtuoso painter, he employs a hyper-realist technique, working the canvas through the traditional chiaroscuro and utilising a single light source to both shape and highlight his figures on the canvas. Touching on themes of nationhood, iconography, ‘cult beauty’ and celebrity culture, Griffiths is holding up a mirror to society.
The collection on display at the State Hermitage Museum, which includes two diptychs and two triptychs, spans the breadth of Griffiths’ artistic concerns for more than a decade, beginning with an ode to corporate greed (21st-Century Boy, 2006), musings on the impact of war upon individual souls (Finest Hour, 2015) and the most recent, never-before-seen The Things They Carried (2016) which references the current refugee crisis with breathtaking urgency. (Text: Hermitage Museum).